1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to technical field of commerce automation and, in one exemplary embodiment, to auctioning with interest rate bidding.
2. Description of Related Art
The Internet and the World Wide Web (“Web”) have changed the landscape of information delivery and affected numerous faculties of life, including electronic commerce and entertainment. One area that has benefited from this technological development is the ability for individuals to sell products over the Internet.
Auctions conducted across the Internet have become a very popular method of selling goods and services (items). In a typical ascending price auction, once a seller has submitted a request to sell an item, the item becomes available for bidding, with the bidding to close typically at some predetermined time (e.g., at noon, 3 days later). Potential buyers are able to view a description and possibly an image of the item, and submit one or more bids for the item. The potential buyer that submitted the highest bid on the item at the end of the auction wins the auction and is typically contractually obligated to purchase the item for the amount bid.
In a typical declining price auction, the price (e.g., dollar amount) for an item is lowered as potential buyers continue to bid on the item for a predetermined amount of time. The price is typically lowered in predetermined increments depending on certain events, such as passage of time or number of bids received. However, even with declining price auctions in which the dollar amount of the item is incrementally lowered, the goal of the seller remains the same, i.e., to sell the item for the highest price possible.
A number of technical challenges exist with respect to the automation of declining auctions between parties in a network-based commerce facility. For example, conventional declining auction technologies are at least limited in types of items that are offered for sale and types of compensation received for those items. Such technological challenges also limit the performance of declining auctions and confine them to only particular types and ways of trading, resulting further in lack of creativity and limited goals for trading on part of the participants (e.g., sellers and buyers).